


What would you give?

by sshysmm



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: (child ballad 53), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Jyn Erso-centric, Lord Bateman, M/M, Minor Injuries, child ballad au, jyn is a scientist held with galen, lullaby pill reference, set in the sw universe but based on, that no one asked for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-01-14
Packaged: 2019-03-04 17:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13369938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sshysmm/pseuds/sshysmm
Summary: Jyn and Galen live and work in a compound ruled by Orson Krennic, essentially prisoners of the Empire. Jyn tries to be obedient enough to keep her and her father safe, but she's growing increasingly frustrated and is finding it hard to ignore the idea that they're working on something utterly destructive. When a Rebel breaks into the compound and tries to assassinate her father she's confronted with the truth about their work and has to make a decision about her future.The song this is based on is about a Lord who's captured and chained to a tree: the daughter of his captor takes pity on him and frees him, and years later she herself leaves her own country to seek him out.





	1. Chapter 1

“For god’s sake man, he was sent here to kill you!”

The voice was rough, with the slurring accent he’d had since her mother had wounded him in protest. Jyn Erso could hear him pacing up and down on the fine stone floors, his boots clicking, a hypnotic rhythm to bind her father’s attention and keep him under the spell of the man in white.

“Y-yes well, Orson, I’m not so sure, you see…”

Jyn clenched her jaw, all too familiar with her father’s reticent tone. She was pressed against the servants’ access door, palms flat against the durasteel, her lips, cheek and ear matched up to the central join that didn’t quite fit plumb together. _Come on, papa_ , she willed him. _Come on. Stand up to him_.

The clicking had stopped, and Orson Krennic heaved a dramatic sigh. “Galen. Galen. You’re a kind-hearted man. I know. But this was a _serious_ breach! We can’t let it go unpunished. Spies, saboteurs, assassins: this isn’t the kind of scum you show mercy towards.”

Jyn held her breath. She’d lived this life, hemmed in and dictated to by Orson Krennic since a brief period of freedom in her youth. She had pretended to be meek and oblivious before Krennic, and she had made it clear to her father that the only reason she did so was for him. Jyn had been watching, waiting and listening for years, and the claustrophobia of the situation was getting to her more than ever as she drifted into her early twenties, offered nothing more than the prospects of studying as Krennic allowed her to. No horizons beyond the Imperial College: to simply follow in her father’s footsteps and help the Empire build whatever it demanded. Research for research’s sake, as they said. But she knew better. And now, impatience with her father was souring the love she felt for him, and this souring she also blamed on Krennic.

“Well, no,” Galen fumbled, and Jyn stretched her head back in despair, rolling away from the join in the doors to stand with her back against the cold metal. The impractical dress she wore — honoured ‘guests’ of the Empire did not wear slacks and tunics, she had been reminded time and again — left her shoulders bare, and she leaned into the discomfort provided by chilled durasteel against her skin.

“What do you recommend, Orson?”

Her father’s voice was small and broken. It was barely even a question, and tears tingled in Jyn’s eyes at the sound of it. It was a voice he’d learned since her mother had died in his arms on the steps outside their compound. Whenever she heard it she remembered the tang of blood in the air, the way the guards had rallied to Krennic and his small wound over her mother, who bravely tried not to regret her actions as she looked up into Galen’s horrified face.

The words coming through the door were muffled now, but Jyn caught enough of it to understand. A humiliation punishment. The man who had broken into their compound — the first outsider to have done so in the fifteen years she’d been there — would be shackled to the tree in the courtyard, visible to the outside world and to any scans his friends might conduct (assuming he had friends). He’d be left to waste, maybe taunted by the guards as they changed shift, made into an example that could be seen by all, outside the compound and within it.

Jyn left the narrow corridor and shouldered past the cook as she hurried back to her quarters.

“Jyn? Everything okay?” the cook was a tall, broad man with rich brown skin and cascading black hair. He didn’t stop her, but waited in the kitchen doorway, a bag of grain under one of his huge arms.

She liked the cook. He was kind to her, and he told her stories about the city beyond their compound. They never broached the subject of her imprisonment, but she always felt that he understood. Without fully turning, sniffing away the emotion that had crept up on her, Jyn paused. “Thanks Baze. It’s fine.”

“I heard about the attack on your father,” he said in his rumbling way, the levity of his expression belying the deep, heavy tones he spoke in. “Is Galen okay?”

Jyn smiled sadly, keeping her eyes down. “Yes, papa’s fine, Baze. They caught the intruder. Papa will be safe now.”

Baze grumbled in a way that could have meant satisfaction with this, or might have expressed some hidden scepticism. Jyn liked the ambiguity in Baze’s wordless responses. It made her feel like she had an ally. And she had to remind herself that she did: Baze had never objected to her using the servant’s corridors, and had never asked her what she was doing listening outside the door to Krennic’s hall.

“Well, you look after yourself, little sister,” the cook told her, turning away into the dark space of the kitchen.

Jyn continued on her way, speeding up her stride so that the flowing skirt and sleeves of her dress whipped the air and her legs kicked the material impatiently. She palmed the door to her private chambers open and flopped down on a couch with a sigh.

She sat with her chin propped on a fist, her elbow on the uncomfortable carved wood of the couch’s arm. The dress pooled around her, so that she felt drowned by the quantity of cloth and kicked her slippers off, hoisting her legs onto the couch to sit more comfortably and to rearrange her costume. Jyn scowled at the floor, thinking over the day’s events.

~*~

She’d been helping her father in his lab, modulating the currents he put through the crystals he was working on. After a break to discuss the instability of the set-up, she’d had an idea and had left to fetch her scrambler. When she’d returned her father had no longer been alone.

Galen had worn an expression of resignation as he leant back against the console, his hands bracing his sagging body, his lips a grimace. He’d been a tall man once, but now seemed small to her, his hair always a little long and lank, his face always patchily shaved.

“Papa!”, Jyn stepped towards him, fearing he’d suffered some sort of physical spell. Then she noticed the silhouette in the corner of the room, arms outstretched, blaster pointed at her father’s chest. Jyn did a double-take, thinking she’d missed the wound at first.

“Stardust!” Galen gasped, throwing a hand up as though to stop the other figure from firing.

The stranger whipped to face her, so that she was now the one looking into the muzzle of his weapon. His eyes glittered in the gloomy lab, reflecting the glow of the crystals they’d been working on. He was older than her, though it was hard to tell by how much: he had a rangy physique and a face hollowed with shadows, and when he looked at her she saw less certainty in his features than she’d seen in her father’s when he’d thought he was about to die.

Under the aim of the blaster, Jyn felt a sweep of rage heat her body. Had she endured Krennic’s imprisonment, kept her head down and hoped for a way out, just so that she and her father could be murdered for doing the work they’d never wanted to do? Her fists clenched, and she raised her chin with a sneer. “Who do you think you are?”

He didn’t speak, but the sharp line between his brows deepened. He swallowed and his arms wavered in the air.

Jyn took another step into the room, firmly and swiftly. Her father moaned in fear and the man with the blaster’s eyes widened, but no shot was fired. She turned from the intruder with disdain and put a hand out to Galen.

“Papa. What’s happened? Has he hurt you?”

“No, Stardust, no.” Galen put a quivering palm up to her face as she bent towards him, checking there really was no evidence of a shot to his chest. She inhaled deeply, sure she’d smell ozone and iron, but only the cool, dry air of the lab filled her lungs.

“He was asking me…” Galen added falteringly.

Jyn turned her face towards the other man again, her skin pale in the greenish light, framed by the long dark waves of her hair. Her mouth was a hard line and her glare had no fear.

The intruder finally found his voice and took his own stealthy pace towards father and daughter: “You work here too? You help the Empire build its weapons?”

She bristled and stood straight, keeping Galen’s hand loosely gripped in hers. “I help to keep my father alive,” she answered with cold precision.

The man swore, glancing around the room. “This isn’t…” he said fumblingly. He shook his head with exasperation. “You shouldn’t be here. They didn’t tell me.”

“If you’re here to kill my father, you’ll have to kill me too,” she stepped in front of Galen, squeezing his fingers and ignoring his weakly muttered protests. She drew herself up to her full height, which wasn’t much, but combined with the Imperial etiquette training, the personal impulse to bind and contain herself against the bleakness of her surroundings, it made her confidence into a barrier.

His blaster dropped and he swore again, half turning as though he expected to just leave by whatever way he’d arrived.

“Do you _know_ what you’ve been making?” he hissed, and Jyn thought that the question was a test.

She didn’t move, thinking of the secrecy of everything in her life, of the words skirting meaning and destination, of Krennic’s allusive references to ‘security’ and to ‘guarantees’. She had some idea, but how could she think of it and still make herself get up every day, keep pretending for her father? Keep pretending that if she could just keep them alive for long enough they’d get out together, and all the damage would be undone. As if all the work they’d produced could be magicked away with the opening of a single door. She shook her head, a tiny movement. “Yes. Not exactly. We’re not exactly working voluntarily.”

“It’s a weapon, Jyn,” her father’s sob came from behind her and she looked down in surprise, turning away from the other man. “A superweapon. That’s what he wants it for.”

Jyn’s eyes widened and she tensed, “you?” she spat at the man with the blaster. “You want to make a weapon with our work?”

“No, not him. Not him. Krennic. It’s what he’s always wanted,” Galen admitted, his head bowed.

“And it must be stopped,” the intruder shifted his grip on his blaster, replacing his free hand on its grip and considering raising it. But his eyes stayed on Jyn’s, a plea and an apology in them.

She stared back, and felt a shiver run down her spine. This man had killed before. She could sense it beneath his present dilemma: there was a shutter in his expression ready to come down when he needed it to, ready to close out the effects of his actions. He let out a short, sharp breath and slowly brought the blaster up again.

“Wait, why don’t you take us with you? We’re prisoners, we’re not collaborators!” Jyn hated the tremor that her voice had developed, but she’d begun to believe that her initial bravado had been misplaced under the circumstances.

He didn’t lower the weapon again, but his expression had not yet closed off. His eyebrows raised incredulously, a dimple by his mouth hollowing as he bit the inside of his lip. “Take you with me? I’ve no guarantee of getting myself out of here, how do you think I’d bring an old man and a…a pampered girl with me?”

His last words didn’t land with the effect he’d intended: Jyn heard the lack of conviction in them. But the rest had been guided by a genuine note of fear.

“I know passages,” she began, but before she could finish the bright white light of the corridor blared into the lab. A handful of guards clattered through the doors behind Jyn and Galen, and another group entered via the doors behind the intruder.

He spun to fire, but, on seeing the numbers, dropped the blaster without hesitation and grabbed at the lapel of his scuffed brown jacket with oil-stained fingers. He pinched at the fabric until it tore, fumbling a small case free. He glanced up once, meeting Jyn’s eyes, and then that shutter she knew he’d had slammed closed and he looked down, popping the case open, and tipping a white pill out.

Before it could reach his mouth, a black-clad guard brought the butt of a rifle down on his shoulder and the pill bounced from his hand, his arm dropping numbly to his side.

Jyn was frozen to the spot, her father’s hand clenched too tight in hers, her eyes fixed on the little white speck as it rolled from the intruder’s desperate reach. He fell to his knees under a hail of blows, and then to the ground, fingers stretching after the pill to the last, until a Death Trooper boot ground it into a fine power on the lab floor.

Around her, black-suited guards clamoured like a flood that overtook the lab and all its contents, sweeping the occupants up and away, rushing her and her father to the safety of Krennic’s watchful eye. Rushing the man who had broken in to a very different reception.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jyn learns something new about her father - the man who she thought incapable of lying...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the support guys! Ask and ye shall receive...

Gazing at the pale marble of the floor, Jyn found herself picturing the fall of that boot again and again, almost feeling the powdery crunch of the pill in her teeth as she dwelled on the memory. She shivered, wrapping an arm around herself and trying to keep her thoughts circling away from the certainty with which the intruder had flung down his weapon. The repeated desperation with which he’d reached for a pill that would presumably have killed him before the guards got hold of him. If they hadn’t got hold of him…

And now his end would be drawn out at Krennic’s will: a public humiliation, spreading him thin until Krennic could see through every lie and protest he might offer.

With alarm, Jyn wondered fleetingly whether she should have taken control of her situation in the way the prisoner had tried to take control of his. If she’d had even the slightest inkling that they were building a superweapon, wouldn’t the deaths of her and her father have saved countless others in the galaxy by preventing the construction from going ahead? She pulled her knees close to her chest and ran the pads of her fingers over the downy surface of the velvet dress, an unconscious search for a comforting stimulation.

Pulling herself back — _No._ — indignation stung her. Why should she have to sacrifice herself when she hadn’t chosen any part of this life? Without her and her father, Krennic would have found a way of pushing the research forward anyway. At least she and Galen could stall things.

But for how long? And now that someone out there knew what she and her father were working on, how long would it be before another intruder got in and completed their mission?

Jyn considered whether she could get a message out, whether she and Galen could explain that they were captives and look for rescue rather than assassination. She had been about to offer knowledge of secret passages to the man earlier, just before the Death Troopers arrived, but it was an offer made out of desperation: the only secret passages she knew took her into servants’ quarters, and even the servants’ exit from the compound was closely guarded.

A hard swell of despair pushed up into her throat as she reminded herself that even getting a message out was something she’d never been brave enough to try before. Her mind ran through option after option, shutting all down and dismissing them as she would the ineffectual suggestions of the lab assistants Krennic sometimes sent to work with her and Galen. She could see no way out, and the walls seemed to have crept closer in around her.

“Ms Erso?” the internal comm system buzzed her name in its prissy, genteel voice.

Sucking in air and smoothing the fabric of her dress, Jyn looked up with flushed cheeks — as if the comms system itself was one of her jailers and she was embarrassed to have been caught plotting against it. “Yes?”

“Director Krennic requests that you and Galen Erso join him at his table this evening. May I give him your acceptance?”

Still awkward with self-consciousness, she dropped her legs from the couch and pushed her slippers back on hastily, raking fingers through her hair. “Now?”

“Director Krennic would like to inform the cook now. You will be expected at eighteen-hundred hours.”

Jyn shrugged; they had these stilted gatherings at least once a week. Sometimes Krennic brought some sneering cronies of his, showing off his domination of the Ersos as though they were curious pets. It was to be expected that he would want them with him today, so that he could lecture them on how lucky they had been to be saved by his men. To remind them to be meek and appreciative.

“Of course,” she mumbled, picking at a thread on the couch.

“Thank you, Ms Erso,” the comms system answered, and switched off its speaker with a click. Jyn eyed it thoughtfully, some half-recognised possibility coalescing in her mind. The cook. Maybe she should take a risk and confide in Baze? Or she could try to crack into the comms system? She’d been trained in coding, and though Krennic had always told her that her skills would never be up to slicing into the compound’s security — teasing her with this possibility, as though he believed that by the time she had the ability to, she would have no desire to leave — she felt newly aware of the foundation of lies their little world was built on.

Her decisive mood made the time until the call for dinner drag. She didn’t want to try anything impulsive: she’d been held back by fear of being discovered, by fear of the repercussions for her and her father all these years. She couldn’t suddenly cast all of that reticence aside and just plug her scrambler into the central system. She needed to think through the options: she needed to have an idea of what steps could be taken.

To keep herself occupied, looking for inspiration and trying to let her mind wander in constructive ways, she roamed the corridors of the upper floor, glaring into the painted eyes of the old satraps and their wives who had occupied the compound before the Empire took it over. The light faded outside, and as she steeled herself to end her pacing and go to the main hall, a heavy metallic clank seemed to bring the distraction she’d been hoping for.

Jyn drifted to one of the tall windows, looking down into the blue gloom of the central square. Three of the four edges were formed by the building that she, her father and Krennic rattled around in, and the fourth was a fortified wall as tall as the building, its smooth sandstone façade broken only by the deep, dark mouth of a recessed, reinforced door. The windows of the building only faced inwards to this courtyard, and the glass was thick enough to keep most of the noises of the outside world at bay. The sound she’d heard had only cut through because of its proximity in the square below.

In the centre of the courtyard a stout old tree grew tall, greedily reaching its upper branches into the dregs of sunlight above the compound’s walls. Jyn had always found it miserly with its leaves, and she’d never once seen a bud on its dry, twisted limbs. And there, in a parody of the winter solstice celebrations she dimly remembered from her childhood, was the source of the noise that had caught her attention: heavy durasteel chains being looped around its girth.

A Death Trooper, camouflaged against the creeping darkness, guided the actions of two luminous-white Stormtroopers as they hammered spikes and brackets into the hard, black trunk.

Jyn had little love for the tree, but she cringed at the insistent ring of metal on metal. The rhythm the troopers struck up was like Krennic’s boots on the stone floors: a rhythm that tapped out the perimeter of her life and days, binding her to this miserable, dusty square. Transfixed by the steady beat, she watched them draw the chains tight. The troopers dusted their hands in satisfaction and the black-suited commander buzzed an order, hefting a set of digital locks.

From the building below her feet a half-hearted commotion burst forth, two more Death Troopers dragging the reluctant body of a man into view. His arms were held out to each side, his body a pale T submerged in the twilight. Jyn leant against the edge of the deep window frame, her knees trembling as the prisoner’s own legs faltered, her hands tightening on cold stone as he tried weakly to pull back from his captors.

He’d been stripped down to his underwear and his shoulder blades clenched a dark shadow down his back as he pulled uselessly against his captors. His arms looked thin: wiry muscles that were no match for bulk of the armoured troopers, his head struggling to raise against the stress position they kept him stretched in.

With contemptuous ease, the troopers hoisted him to the foot of the tree, wreathing him in the deeper gloom beneath the spreading branches. Jyn couldn’t count how many times the restraints crossed his body. The tears that filmed over her eyes blurred the scene until his form was washed away in the darkness. She let her weight fall against the pillar of the window frame, one hand covering her trembling mouth. If she’d been able to swipe away the blank, gauzy fear that lay over her thoughts, she might have asked herself whether she was crying for the man below, who she did not know, and who had earlier pointed his blaster straight at her, or for herself, and the realisation that she couldn’t keep pretending any longer, no matter how much her father needed her to.

“Ms Erso?” the voice of the comms unit trilled down the corridor. “You are expected in the dining hall.”

Jyn drew an unsteady, watery breath and blinked rapidly. As she tried to regain focus the compound’s automatic lights flickered on, catching her in an artificially warm orange glow. The bulbs above her gained strength slowly, and as they brightened the dark transparisteel window became a barrier, the contours of the courtyard fading behind a reflection of herself.

Down in the blackest part of the square, oppressed by the heavy form of the tree and abandoned by his captors, the would-be assassin looked up, trying to see the stars and fighting the pinch in his shoulders. Illuminated for a brief moment, before the lights turned her to a silhouette, he saw the scientist’s daughter looking down at him, her eyes big and her hand to her mouth, her body slumped in defeat at the edge of the window.

~*~

Krennic was more pleased with himself than ever. His eyes roved over Jyn and Galen, who sat in silent contemplation of their place-settings. “Here’s to a successful day of _not being assassinated_.” Krennic raised a glass and twisted out a smile for his captive audience.

Galen’s fingers moved towards the stem of his glass first in the expectant silence, and Jyn reluctantly mirrored him, the two of them stiffly echoing Krennic’s gesture. She saw the level of the liquid in her father’s glass quiver in his unsteady grip, and looked away, swallowing a larger gulp of the drink than she’d intended. She felt reckless, and dehydrated after the tears she’d hastily washed away. She needed to keep her mouth shut. Her jaw ached.

“Once more, I apologise we didn’t get to you sooner,” Krennic swirled his drink. His cheeks were round with pride, smug lines framing his mouth. “He was a sneaky one. But that particular leak has been plugged.”

“How,” Jyn gulped, trying to sound as guileless as possible, and widening her eyes. “How did he manage to get in?”

“Oh, don’t trouble yourself about that,” Krennic waved a hand. “Like I said: no chance of it happening again. His Rebel friends won’t get a second go of it.”

She glanced over at her father, whose eyes met hers. He looked more wretched than normal, his shoulders hunched high and knuckles white where he gripped his cutlery. Jyn tried a nonchalant tilt of her head, as though she’d simply misheard: “I’m sorry. Rebels?”

Krennic sat back a little and looked at her, and Jyn flushed, worrying she’d asked too much, too soon. When Krennic finally spoke, she didn’t need to look up to recognise the sardonic curl to his lips. “Oh, to be too young to remember…eh, Galen? It’s these terrorists who have been keeping the war going all these years. A bunch of trouble-makers who want things all their own way. Who stand in the way of progress because they are afraid to embrace the future.”

Warming a little to the subject, Krennic shifted and took another deep draught of wine, watching Galen as he did. “I must have had them taken off your syllabus, Jyn. They’re pretty inconsequential in the scheme of things. Think they’re a big deal — delusions of grandeur and all that. But as we saw again today, they’re a bunch of amateur thugs. Breaking into a research facility to threaten a man of ill health and his helpless daughter! Monstrous.”

“Well, I hope you got what you wanted from him, Orson,” Galen finally said, very softly, without looking up. Jyn blinked at him in surprise.

Krennic barked a laugh. “Oh yes. Don’t worry about that, Galen. He told me all I needed to know: namely that he and his friends haven’t a clue what we’re building here. They cannot possibly grasp the magnitude of your work. But they’ll see soon enough,” he muttered the last part into his glass, and Jyn bit her tongue and tried not to formulate any more questions along this line.

The rest of the talk turned to the forced niceties of research problems, with which Krennic liked to think he kept up better than he actually did. From power containment to crystal vibrations, each question now seemed heavy with meaning to Jyn: each one spoke of the superweapon she’d blinded herself to before that day. Krennic wanted so much raw power from the crystals, how had she not seen it before?

Finally, feeling deflated and dry-mouthed from the wine and the words she couldn’t let herself speak, Jyn left the table and was allowed to escort her father through the corridors to their quarters.

“Goodnight, papa,” she said meekly, standing on tiptoes to throw her arms around his neck.

“Stardust…” he sighed, wrapping his arms around her in a bearlike hug that made her feel young and small again. Like he’d look after her rather than the other way around.

“Jyn, I’m sorry,” he whispered, and she tensed, but he held on without change. “I have to tell you something.”

“What is it, papa?”

He drew a juddering, deep breath against her shoulder and rocked her a little from side to side. “I sent word out. Through Baze, the cook. I thought the Rebels would help us. I didn’t think…I’m so sorry I put you in danger, my Stardust.”

Jyn tried to swallow, but her throat just clenched drily. “What?” All this time, her father had been taking the risks she’d only been dreaming of? She’d been holding back, over-cautious, and her father — her reticent, awkward father, who had never been able to lie for a damn — had been entrusting their lives, and their freedom, to a cook she’d thought of as little more than an agony aunt?

“I thought he was here to help us, Jyn, I didn’t think the Rebels would…” he shook his head and held her tighter, even as Jyn felt her muscles stiffen, wanted to push away and look him in the eyes, to scour his features for some change she must have missed: some signal that he’d been keeping this from her.

“It’s okay, papa,” she made herself coo. Her skin felt hot, but she pushed down the sudden awareness of youth and foolishness and gently untangled herself from Galen’s hold. “He might still have helped us. He didn’t know all the details, couldn’t you see?”

Her father’s face seemed to come slowly into focus as its lines sharpened, grief shifting to thoughtfulness. “Jyn, what are you saying? We mustn’t take any more risks…Right now, we can’t.”

“I saw them earlier. What they’ve done to him. That’s on us now, as well as this weapon.” she paused, looking for the words that would work. Confidence returned as she clung to the hope that if they both resisted this together they might actually stand a chance. Possibilities became more concrete once they were shared. “What if we can free him? Baze could help him escape? Then he’d have the full picture, and he’d be able to tell the Rebels what’s really going on here.”

Galen didn’t look convinced. It was like when she made a suggestion in the lab and it turned out to be one he’d already thought of and dismissed. “Jyn, we can’t ask any more of Baze. Krennic may already know! He says he’s ‘plugged the leak’. What if I’ve already condemned Baze?”

She didn’t want to say that she’d been assuming Krennic was just lying, as he always did: bluffing about his control of the compound and hoping the stakes were too high for them to call him on it. Her father’s firm mouth was a mirror of her own, and silently, stubbornly, she vowed to repay his efforts her own way. If he wouldn’t help her now, then she would help them both. A plan was beginning to materialise in her mind, a few loosely sketched out steps, ending in the mysterious thrill of freedom.

“Goodnight, papa,” she repeated.

He regarded her seriously for a moment, then cupped her face with his large hands and planted a kiss on her forehead. “Goodnight, Stardust.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jyn resolves to take matters into her own hands in order to find a way of getting help from the Rebels.

****

By the time the guards had changed for the night shift, Jyn felt more awake than she had in her whole lifetime. She trembled on her doorstep for a moment and then hefted her satchel close, pulling her cloak together with one hand and pressing her other to the door’s access panel.

She trotted through empty corridors lit by the moon, slipping between the shadows of statues and pillars until she reached the servants’ access door. There was no sound in the building other than the low-level hum of background processes, and Jyn plunged on into the darker, narrower route to the kitchen, speeding up her pace as she went.

The labyrinth of corridors had once facilitated a small army of serving staff in the building, but under Krennic’s rule much of the running of the place was done by droids. Only the old cook had been retained, and the only other humans who used the corridors were Krennic’s messengers. They made so much noise, clomping about in their Imperial naval boots, that Jyn had never worried about running into them.

But now, only just in time, approaching the kitchen at a near jog, she heard voices murmuring ahead of her. Jyn skidded to a halt and ducked back around the last corner, trying to hear who was speaking. She couldn’t catch the words, but figured out that it was Krennic talking to Baze. A cold pressure built up in her chest: did Krennic know about Baze’s role in the day’s events?

She held her breath, her fists clenched tight on the strap of her bag, but the voices were never raised. After what seemed a small eternity, she heard Krennic’s boots tap their tattoo down the corridor away from her, back towards his own quarters and the door she’d been listening at earlier.

Jyn resumed her journey to the kitchen, more slowly this time, and cleared her throat timidly as she squinted into the dark room.

Baze, who had been leaning over one of the sturdy scrubbed wood tables, turned his head to peer at her. He said nothing, but raised his eyebrows, his expression otherwise inscrutable.

“Sorry. Um. I hope you don’t mind,” she began, stepping into the room and then fidgeting at a distance, as though he were some wild creature she didn’t dare approach.

Baze didn’t move, but kept his steady gaze on her. He was a broad-shouldered, muscular man of about fifty, with a smattering of grey hairs in his neatly trimmed beard. It struck Jyn that even the supremely arrogant Krennic must have felt somewhat insecure when forced to look up into Baze’s unreadable face.

“I want to help that man,” Jyn tried again. “The one who was captured. I don’t know what I can do yet, but if you have any food, or a carafe I can take down to him…”

At this, Baze’s expression did change, but Jyn wasn’t sure she knew him well enough to interpret it. He pushed off from the table and turned to face her. “What are you trying to do, little sister?”

“Nothing,” the word came out too quickly, almost before Baze himself had finished speaking. “I want to help.”

“But he’s a spy and he tried to kill you and your father,” the way his voice lilted made Jyn think these words were spoken in mockery of her, but his face remained so still. “And anyway, I’ve just been ordered to take stale bread and water to him in the mornings. To prolong his punishment, you see. We don’t want him dying on the first day…”

“That’s what you were talking to Krennic about, just now?” Jyn felt dizzy with uncertainty, but the admission that she’d heard them slipped out without her control.

Baze grunted and folded his big arms across his chest. He seemed on the verge of smiling. “That is what Director Krennic was talking to me about. Do you think he should have had anything else to say to me?”

“No,” Jyn said hastily, speaking before she’d fully grasped the implication. “No, I mean…my father was worried. He told me you’d helped him, and he was — we were — worried Krennic had found out.”

The old cook’s jaw tightened, and he looked away for a moment with another thoughtful rumble. “No, he doesn’t know about that.” He studied the far corner of the kitchen for a moment and then moved off, heading for the storage that lined one wall of the room.

“I’ll get you your supplies. But not too much — it will be suspicious if their prisoner benefits from a healthier diet than he gets from his Rebel friends.” Baze took a few items from their shelves, scraped and poured and sliced them, and brought a set of vessels cradled in his rough palms back to Jyn, who opened her satchel gratefully. “Bread and blue butter. Water and Corellian brandy. And,” he held a small glass jar before her face, turning it so that the translucent, golden substance inside seemed to glitter. “Honey. It’s antibacterial,” he said meaningfully, placing it on top of the other things.

Jyn looked up at him nervously and gave him a tight smile, which Baze returned with warmth, stretching the deep lines around his eyes. “We’ll need to find a way to get him out quickly,” he told her.

She nodded: “I know. We will. I’m working on something.”

He gave her a curious tilt of the chin but didn’t press, and sent her on her way, only calling softly after her as she left: “Tell Galen that I sent the message as he asked. Must have been something lost in translation at the other end. I’m sorry you both had to go through that.”

~*~

By the time Jyn reached the courtyard the moon had been tucked into the clouds and the square was black and featureless. She tried to assess her path from the doorway in the corner of the court, but couldn’t see a single distinguishing shape. It was only when she turned her eyes up to the sky that she could pick out the branches of the tree as distinct from the blueish night above.

Beyond the compound walls the sound of the city travelled through the still night air: the jets of ships arriving and leaving on the other side of town, cargo clanking on the loaders, the occasional blare of a speeder’s horn or a personal alarm, and what might have been the raised voices of any number of beings involved in any number of transactions. The city didn’t keep to daylight hours, and Jyn had never before realised how insulated her quarters were from the bustle beyond their walls.

With a shiver, she steeled herself, her mind jangling with competing excuses should anyone notice her movement. But the city covered the sound of her feet crunching on sand and gravel, and the darkness was deep in the shadow of the walls. It took a few more paces than she’d anticipated, but soon she was under the boughs of the tree, circling its immense trunk until she faced the body of the prisoner, a pale smudge against the oppressive absence of light.

Jyn crouched before him, feeling exposed in that central space.

His head was bowed, his dark hair the blue of the night sky, shoulders knotted with shadow like the restraints crossing his chest. His breathing was steady and not as shallow as she’d feared it would be, though his arms and wrists were already raw where the chains held him, and there were smudges of inky colour on his body that weren’t just natural contours thrown into contrast.

She sat on one of the tree’s great roots as close to him as possible and opened her satchel. With quivering fingers, she reached out through the darkness to touch the skin of his shoulder. “Are you—?”

The question remained open as his head flew up, and Jyn withdrew her hand as if she had been scorched by the touch of him.

His eyes met hers, fierce and hollow depths, his mouth thin like a knife blade.

Jyn’s sharp intake of breath was silent, her face shuttering in a mirror of his as she delved into the satchel. She drew some of the items from her bag, keeping eye contact as she did, and noting the sharpness of his gaze fall out of focus a little. His neck and shoulders trembled slightly as he held his head up, and the line to the side of his mouth deepened, half-concealed in stubble just long enough to be called a beard.

“I brought food,” she told him quietly. “And things to clean your wounds.”

Practiced creases folded the illusion of amusement into his eyes, and he looked down, doing a good job of making it seem like choice rather than the necessity of the pressure on his body. “Are you part of the torture?” he chuckled.

Jyn tilted her head to the side and let exasperation enter her voice: “I’m here to _help you_.” It was hard not to add _you nerfherder_ out loud.

“By prolonging this?”

“I want to find you a way out. But until then, I want you to be alive.”

His head hung low again, and he let out a sigh. Jyn saw some of the hollows in his body grow a little shallower as he tried to relax. His narrow chest was dusted with dark twists of hair and his belly creased in soft folds as the tree and the restraints held him awkwardly.

“I _can_ get you out,” she added. “I just need to check the encryption on these locks, and I need to know that you’ll be able to get the right message to the Rebels this time.”

At this he looked up again more slowly, a canny glint in his expression. He surveyed her, but decided not to challenge an exchange disguised as altruism. “Water,” he nodded at the carafe in her hands.

Jyn uncorked it and held the vessel as steadily as she could to his mouth. It was hard for him to tilt his head back far, but at an angle he was able to catch the steady flow she released. With that done, and a small part of her mind spinning with distraction at the way stray droplets had collected in his beard, Jyn handed him chunks of the crumbly bread Baze had given her. Heat crept up her neck and chin and she kept her eyes down, confused and frustrated with herself for the way her skin shivered as his lips brushed her hand.

She tried to sweep away the sensation, dusting crumbs off the material of her cloak and skirt and flexing her fingers.

The prisoner let out a tense cough that made his body wince in response, and Jyn frowned, looking again at the patches of bruising on his skin and trying to count the areas where it had been broken.

“Tell me your name,” the words leapt from her mouth without a conscious thought.

He swayed his gaze back up to her and licked his bottom lip, scrutinising her for a long moment before he responded. “No. You tell me yours.”

Her self-consciousness was cleared beneath another tide of impatience. Like in the lab earlier — thought it felt like an age ago — she was torn between apprehension and irritation when he spoke as though he knew more about her than she did. “Trust goes both ways.”

She didn’t expect a response to her rebuke, and pulled out the brandy and a scrap of shimmersilk torn from one of her dresses, swinging the bottle to soak one end of the rag. But when she looked up to find her way to the grazed skin on his wrist he leaned his head over, closing the space between them so that his mouth faced her ear. “Andor. Captain. Cassian Andor.”

Her hand paused for a moment over the broken skin, then she swept the strong alcohol over it and said over his hissed curse: “Jyn Erso. Daughter of Galen and Lyra.”

His skin was cool under her grip as she worked from wound to wound, cleaning the reddening patches of his body: cuts, scrapes and tears from a day spent in the company of Krennic’s troopers. She worked her way from his edges inwards, starting with his raw wrists, moving to the burn a stun prod had left on his shoulder, into the cut on the peak of his cheekbone. His lids closed as she cleaned this last one, long dark lashes soft over the greyish blooms below his eyes.

Jyn was struck by how tired he seemed, more than even one long day in Krennic’s prisons warranted. He wasn’t that much older than her, but his features had a weathered look. Pity and a sudden worry for him made Jyn frown, a deep ache building in her chest. Baze had seemed certain that he wouldn’t talk, but to her he already seemed stretched to the point of exhaustion, accepting of whatever became of him.

“Why were you sent to kill my father?” she murmured sadly, brushing a smudge of honey over his cut with her thumb, his head now cradled in the loose grip of her fingers.

Cassian’s eyes lifted to her, and challenged her with a spark of resistance. “I had my orders.”

She pulled her touch away, thinking of Baze’s last words to her, and her father’s panicked apology. “Even if you knew they were wrong?”

His expression was steady, his dark brown eyes seeming to see right through her. “And what do you know about it?” he hissed. “You’ve been living here in luxury, off the back of the galaxy’s suffering. Helping the Empire to tighten its grip on innocent lives, making weapons that will enforce tyranny wherever they’re used. How can you say my orders were wrong?”

Jyn blanched, his words like a knife twisting in her gut. It wasn’t fair to accuse her of complicity, of benefitting in any way from this life. A stubborn anger made her push back: “I have only tried to keep my father safe and alive. Do you know the threats I’ve been hearing my whole life? What I was told would be my fault if I didn’t do the work Krennic wanted? My father _trusted_ you. He trusted the Rebellion to help him, not to kill him!”

His jaw shifted and set, and Jyn waited, but he seemed to have nothing more to say. Disappointed at herself and at him, she saw to the other injuries she could get to around the chains that held him upright.

“You want to help me get out so I’ll tell the Rebellion you need saving. But what can I tell them that’s new? What new information can I give them to change their minds?”

Jyn watched her hands blankly, feeling his body move beneath her touch as he spoke. She shrugged, wondering how to justify to this distant cause that her life was worth saving. “I don’t know. I don’t have any information. Every day, all I do is…” with a shiver, something occurred to her.

“I could get the plans. The plans to the weapon we’ve been working on. The larger project is encrypted, so that only the director can see how it all fits together, but I could probably hack it.”

Their faces were close when she looked up, and for the first time, she saw a curve light the edge of his lips. “I could hack it,” she repeated, and the curve turned into a smile that reached all the way up to his eyes.

“I think we could work with that,” he said softly, and she wondered whether the relief she thought she heard in his voice was just a projection of her own feeling: a release that made her pulse run fast.

She let herself grin back at him, a little unnerved by the way the moment made the courtyard spin around her. Then she withdrew her scrambler from her bag of supplies and moved to clip it to the digital lock holding his chains together, concentrating hard on the screen even before the data started coming through. He watched her work, and it made the blood rise to her cheeks.

“I’ll just copy the encryption,” she said in order to fill the silence. “And within a day or two I should have it cracked — they’ll be monitoring the connection, so I’ll need to trick them into thinking it hasn’t been interrupted, so that you have time to get out during the night.” She glanced back at him before unclipping the device. “How were you going to get out if they hadn’t found you?”

“The cook. He has contacts in the city. One to cause a distraction, then he’d help me slip out, and a pilot I know was meant to pick me up.”

“I’ll talk to Baze,” she promised, repacking her bag.

The night was still deep and she hesitated, reluctant to leave him: caught in the sensation of proximity, of being able to talk honestly for the first time in her adult life. “I’ll stay longer, if you’d like,” Jyn said softly.

Cassian shifted his shoulders against the tree, relieving some of the tension in his body so that he could look up at her more comfortably. “Go,” he shook his head. “I’ll be ok.”

She stood, but was still reluctant to turn from him, and in his eyes she saw an echo of her own worry: if she left him now what was there to stop Krennic from changing his mind about the punishment? How could she be sure Cassian would still be there the following night?

“Be here tomorrow,” she told him.

He smiled again, his lips a wry zig-zag. “I’ll do my best.”

Jyn pulled the hood of her cloak up and wrapped the material close around herself and her satchel, then she strode out into the open again, aiming for a corner of the courtyard where the three-sided compound met the fortified front wall.

She found her way back to her room through the blind memory of her footsteps, all the while her mind still out in the night, sheltering under the great tree with Captain Cassian Andor. Questions and possibilities vied with each other, so that when she tried to lie down to sleep she kept forgetting to close her eyes. Jyn gave up and left her bed, retrieving her scrambler. She plugged it into her data console and didn’t notice the chrono slide around to morning.

**Author's Note:**

> Lyrics to the folk song this is all based on (as an English folk song obviously Turkey is the evil foreign empire, so it was quite satisfying essentially switching that round in the fic) - versions by Chris Wood and Jim Moray use these lyrics, which have a much happier ending than many other versions:
> 
> Lord Bateman was a noble lord,  
> A noble lord of high degree,  
> He put himself on board a ship,  
> Some foreign country he would go see.
> 
> And he sailed East, and he sailed West!  
> Sailed into proud Turkey.  
> But he was taken and put in prison  
> Until his life it grew quite weary
> 
> And in their prisons there grew a tree,  
> They grew it stout and grew it strong.  
> And he was chained up all by the middle  
> Until his life it was almost gone
> 
> But the Turk, he had one only daughter  
> A finer lady you ne’er did see  
> She shed a tear and she's set her mind  
> She swore Lord Bateman she would go see
> 
> Do you have land? Do you have living?  
> Does Northumberland belong to thee?  
> What would you give to a brave young lady,  
> If out of prison she'd set you free?
> 
> Well I have land, land and I have living  
> Half Northumberland belongs to me  
> I'd give it all it all to a brave young lady  
> If out of prison she did set me
> 
> She stole the key from her father's pillow  
> Poured Lord Bateman her father's wine  
> And every health they drank together  
> Well I wish Lord Bateman, you were mine
> 
> She's taken him down to her father's harbour  
> Found for him that ship of fame  
> Farewell, farewell Lord Bateman  
> And I know I'll never see your face again
> 
> Seven years have gone and passed  
> From her heart she's not been freed  
> She's packed up all of her gold and clothing  
> And swore Lord Bateman she would go see
> 
> And when she came to London City  
> Cried Lord Bateman through the town  
> Every stranger that did pass by her  
> Did lead her on to Northumberland
> 
> Is this called Lord Bateman's castle?  
> Is his Lordship here within  
> “Oh yes, oh, yes!" cried the proud young porter  
> Pray tell what news can I give to him?
> 
> Go tell him: send me a cut of bread  
> Tell him send me a cup of wine  
> And to remember the brave young lady  
> Who did release him when he was confined
> 
> So away, away tore the proud young porter  
> Away, away, away went he  
> He's cried "Lord Bateman, my lord and master  
> It’s your Sophia's crossed the sea!"
> 
> "She has got rings, rings on every finger  
> 'Round her middle one she has three  
> She has more gold all about her person  
> To buy Northumberland from under thee!"
> 
> Lord Bateman then in silence ‘drew  
> From his heart he'd not been free  
> "I'd give you all of my father's stable  
> If my Sophia has crossed the sea!"
> 
> Lord Bateman then to his true love flew  
> From his heart he'd not been free  
> And never was there a love so constant  
> Since bold Sophia's crossed the sea


End file.
